HeartSmart: "The Right Person Myth"

First in the sermon series, "HeartSmart," Prairie Chapel UMC

(Ge 2:8;21-25; 1 Cor 13:4-8a NIV) (1/4/15)

INTRO

This year will mark our 55^th Wedding Anniversary.  I can remember our first kiss.  We were 14, freshmen in high school.  We went to the movies together.  First date?  Not sure.  Rosemary was staying at a friend’s house about a block from the movie theater.  In Burke, most places weren’t much more than a block apart.  I lived three blocks from the movie theater.

Anyway, it was a cold January night.  Clear sky.  Moonless night.  I’m guessing it was 10 below, the kind of night where the snow squeaks beneath your shoes when you walk.

I walked Rosemary to Barbara’s house and we kissed on the front step.  At least I kissed, I’m not sure what she did.  I ran all the way home!

That was 60 years ago, this month.  60 years ago.  I’m sure that along the way, Rosemary and I believed that we were just the right person for one another.

But do you know how much we’ve changed over those 60 years?  How many different people we have been?

Rosemary was a student, a telephone operator, a secretary with great responsibility, a mother, an Army wife, a wife and mother waiting for the husband/father to return from war (that was a life in itself), a mother grieving a lost son (another life), a person entering new seasons, a person at times wondering who the “hell” I was, a grandmother, a preacher’s wife (a good one I might add).

And me: a student (a couple of different times), a starving lieutenant, a pilot, a warrior, a returning soldier (and I would have to say a difficult one.  I came home a different person each time.  Difficult, especially after Korea.), a hobbiest, passionate about hobbies: photography, a golf nut, a grieving father (much different than the grieving mother I described, yet we clinged to one another as we both dealt with our grief), an executive with a major corporation with the demands that that brings, a small business owner with different demands, a grandfather, a religious nut. 

One of the myths of our society, I suppose fostered by the Prince Charming, Snow White fantasies (“Someday my Prince will come”) is “If I could only find the right person, if I could only meet, bump into, marry the right person everything would be alright.  We would live happily ever after.”  Right?

So, which one of these Rosemarys I’ve described in the right person for me? 

Which one of these Ricks is the right person for her?  Which, if ever, was Rosemary’s Prince Charming?  And if there ever was a day or a time that I was, the next day or the next season I was definitely not.

By the way, there was a time when our marriage was nearly perfect.  Rosemary was the perfect princess.  It was in flight school and the flight surgeon gathered all of the student’s wives together and told them if we didn’t get a good breakfast we would have low blood sugar and probably crash and die.  Rosemary fixed me breakfast every morning!  Perfect.  Until she figured out that the flight surgeon was a chauvinist and besides, I could get breakfast at the flightline if I’d just leave a little earlier.  But for a while, it was perfect.

By the way, this idea of change, that the right person is a myth, also applies to our other relationships: our friendships, our siblings, our families.  And you that your brothers, sisters, in-laws, whatever are not always the right person, but you’re stuck with them anyway.  Whether arrogant, rude or redneck, you’re stuck with them anyway, right person or not!

So if the right person is a myth, how is it that we learn to be in relationship?  Society must prepare us right?  We have 12 or 16 years of education, the schools must teach us right?  If we are going to get a driver’s license we have classes to take, tests to pass.  If we are going to buy a gun, we have fire arms safety classes we have to take.  Society must prepare us for relationships.  No?

If we’re of age, all we do is go to the courthouse and plunk down a few dollars and buy a marriage certificate.  I guess the test is the ability to find the courthouse and the church or the justice of peace.

So, how is it we learn to be spouses?  From our parents.  But in this day and age, the probability is that at least one of the people in the marriage will be coming from a home in which the parents are divorced, maybe not so amicably.  What do we learn from that?

Friendships are the same way.  As children we form our friendships and make our enemies on the playgrounds apart from parents and teachers.  We do it by trial and error.  And we learn to shed friends when they aren’t the right person.  And in 40 percent of our marriages, we do the same.  Forty percent, two in five.

We need models for our marriages.  What does an ideal marriage look like?  A story: An elderly married couple, golden years climbs into bed together.  The wife says, “Honey, when we were younger, you used to lay a little closer.”  So he sidles over a little bit.  In a while, the wife says, “Honey when we were younger, you used to hold my hand.”  So he reaches over, finds her hand, intertwines his fingers.  Then she says, “Honey, when we were younger, you used to nibble on my ear.”
With that, the husband throws of the covers, heads out the door of the bedroom and down the hall.  Dismayed the wife calls out, “Honey, where are you going?”  To which he replies, “I’m going to kitchen to get my teeth.”

Maybe the example of married we are looking for is one in which a spouse will get out of a warm bed, into the cold of the house and go to the kitchen to get his teeth simply so that he can bless the other one with no reward to himself.  Maybe that’s what a relationship looks like.

So maybe before we go further I can give you the definition of what a Godly relationship, whether marriage or friendship looks like: A Godly relationship is one in which the partners seek to bless one another and be a companion to one another. And guess what, they do it through thick and thin.

I say Godly relationship.  Relationships are part of God’s plan.  Marriage was God’s big idea.  So big, so important, relationships and marriage show up in the creation narrative, the first three chapters of the bible. 

Creative narratives, creations stories.  You know there are two of them from two different God-believing communities of faith, maybe stories from as much as four centuries apart.  We know them both.
--In the first, God creates the world in seven days.  Each day he looks on his creation and calls it good.  On the sixth day he creates male and female together and says it is good, very good.
--The second story begins in chapter two.  It is the story of Eden.  God creates man and places him in the garden.  It doesn’t take long for God to see what he had declared good was not so good after all and he says so: “It is not good for man to be alone.”
--God says, “I know what I will do, I will create a helper that is suitable for him.”  Helper that is suitable.  Suitable, suitable.  Keep that in mind.  It will become a word that is both wonderful and maddening at the same time.  “I know what I will do, I’ll create a helpmate that is suitable for him.”

So the story goes, God puts Adam into a deep sleep and takes a rib from his side, so made from the very same stuff, God creates woman.  And Adam is amazed.  He says, “At last, at last, this is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh.”  And in the next breath, God creates marriage: Therefore a man leaves his father and his mother and clings to his wife, and they become one flesh.  And the man and the wife were both naked and they were not afraid.”  (Ge 2:24-25)

A helper that is suitable.  By the way, helper in no way is intended to be subordinate too.  The same Hebrew word is used in other places with God as helper.  Definitely not subordinate.  But it’s this word “suitable” that I’m interested in.  Suitable does not mean the same.  Suitable does not mean the same.  In fact, one Hebrew definition means that it is opposite.  A helpmate that is opposite.  Not opposite in a bad way but in a good way.  A helpmate that is opposite in a good way.  If that is true, can you see why our spouses, our helpers can be maddening at times, frustrating at times?  And why we may think they are not always the right person?

Doesn’t sound like God’s big idea was so big after all does it?  If we’re not supposed to be looking for the right person, what are we to do? 

If we’re a single hoping for a spouse?  What?  Or married seemingly in a different season of life than our spouse?  What?  Or family, or lonely, or looking for a friend?  You hear that often in kids don’t you, but in adults too, “I don’t have any friends.”  People just hoping that someone will enter their lives.  What are we supposed to do?

If the right person to do that is a myth, what are we to do?  According to one of my gurus, Andy Stanley, what you are to do while you are waiting, instead of waiting for the right person to come along, what you are to do is “Become the person you are looking for is looking for.”
Instead of searching for the right person, become the person you are looking for is looking for.  The… person… you… are… looking for…. Is looking for.

In my wedding sermons, I turn this around a little bit.  So Sandra and Darwin, you’ll hear this again.  I start with definitions of success and happiness.  We all want successful marriages right?  We all want happy marriages, right?
The definition of success is “Getting what you want.”  Sounds right.  “Success is getting what you want.”
Happiness, the definition of happiness is “Wanting what you get.”  “Wanting what you get.”

Which of those Ricks did Rosemary want?  Which season of life?  Some, many, but others maybe not so much.
--Now for Rosemary, if the Rick she got at that point, was not the one she wanted, she may not have been able to do much about Rick.  That was the one Rick she had for that time.
--But there was something she could do in the meantime.  She could become the person she wants, wants.  In fact, it’s something she wants to do all the time, knowing that our lives from time to time are going to be out of sync.  In the meantime, all the time, we strive to become the person we want, wants.  And when we strive to do this, we influence the other person, too.

GOD

So how is it we become the person we want, wants?  The person we’re looking for is looking for?  We begin by looking at the foundational ideas of our faith.  We are to love one another.  And this is whether the context is family or friendship or marriage. 

Long before the gospels were written to give voice to Jesus’ words, Paul and James in their letters were saying that the whole law (James called it the royal law) can be summed up in love your neighbor as yourself.

The Greek word they use is agape, an active, sacrificial love that expects nothing in return.  Just as we defined marriage, an active love that seeks to bless the other person.  In those things you think, say, or do in your relationship with another seek to bless them. 

Agape is the word used in 1 Corinthians, chapter 13, the words that are often called the love chapter.  Agape.  The King James Version translated it as “Charity”  “If I speak in the tongues of men and angels and have not charity.”  We can be great, we can seem to do all things, but if we do not seek to bless others, we are nothing.

Agape.  By the way, the love chapter was never intended to be a wedding scripture.  It was intended for all relationships.  It was talking about how we are to treat one another in community.  It was about friendships.  Of course it is about partners too.

So what does it tell us?  Reading from the NIV translation, First Corinthians 13 verses 4 to 8:  Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  ⁸ Love never fails.

Love is patient.  Love involves waiting.  What do we do in the meantime?  We seek to become the person we want, wants.  Love is patient.

Love is kind.  I looked up the definition of kind: “Having a friendly, generous, warm-hearted, sympathetic, agreeable, beneficial nature.”  I would add, one that seeks to bless the other.  When you come into the room, when you come into the presence of your friends or your beloved, do dogs scurry into corners, or does the warm-hearted index rise?  That’s what we want: When we come into the presence of our friends or beloved, we want the “warm-hearted” index to rise.  We are going to have a lot more to say about kindness in the fifth message of the series.  I would suggest the most important of the six messages.  A message about kindness.

“It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud, It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking.”  It puts the interest of the other above his or herself. 

”it is not easily angered,”  We’re going to talk more about this next week.

“it keeps no record of wrongs.”  Forgiveness is essential in relationships.  If we are going to become the person we want, wants, that includes forgiveness.  “Forgive one another as God in Christ has forgiven you.

^“6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.  ⁸ Love never fails”  Love wants the best for the other.

CLOSE

There’s a lot of grist here.  But here’s the deal: This is how you become the person you’re looking for is looking for, the person you want, wants.

And you become that person now, not waiting until the next person or the next season or life shows up, comes along side.  You begin now.

There’s a story of a girl brought up in a good Christian home that went off to college and slipped into a routine of frequenting singles bars and hooking up on a frequent basis and then one night encountered Mr. Right at a social gathering.  She told her mother about him and mother was aware of her daughter’s side from virtue.  The daughter told of Mr. Right as being a person of good Christian values who just glowed, said and did all the right things.  The mother said, “O honey, a guy like that probably isn’t going to want a girl like you.”  At that point she resolved to become the person she was looking for is looking for.  Beginning now.  Waiting until the next time is too late.  Now.

Likewise, waiting until we hit a rough patch or our relationships are going well is not the time to begin.  Don’t wait to become patient, or kind, to be trusting, or protecting or persevering.  Now is the time to become the person you want, wants.

To help you, I’ve given you a card with this passage on it.  Use it as a checklist.  Keep it in a purse, fold it and keep in your wallet, make a tent out of it and keep it on your desk.  But use it!  The other side is for a later session but you can peek at it.  Use the card.  Start becoming the person you want, wants, now.  Look at it daily, evaluate it daily

Love, agape.  What we’re talking about is how we become a loving person.  In all relationships, but especially in marriage, what does agape look like?

When Rosemary and I moved to Columbia, we met a couple at church, Rev. Bob and Marie Treece.  Bob had taught seminary at Boston University and he was my Sunday School teacher at Fairview.  Marie was beginning to show signs of dementia and problematic.  She often walked away from home and her Alzheimer’s was not pleasant.  In a few years, Bob, now eighty himself had to put Marie in a care facility.  Bob’s love never failed.  Even though Marie had nothing to give in return, Bob spent every day with her, at least four hours every day, and every day he would tell her the stories of their life together.  Being her companion, striving to bless her in anyway he could.

After three years, Marie passed away.  What Bob was doing in the fading years of Marie’s life was jumping out of an otherwise warm bed and heading to the kitchen each day to get his teeth in order to do anything he could to bless her.

That was agape.  That was what it means to bless another, to be their companion “in sickness or in health, as long as we both shall live.”

A few months after Marie passed away, Rosemary and I were eating at Panera’s and noticed Bob and a widow from church in the Target wing of the mall.  Octogenarians both.

Adelene was a pastor’s widow, delightful, delightful person.  As we observed Bob and Adelene talking we saw Adelene pick some lint off Bob’s sweater.  We said, is there something going on here? 

A year or so later, there was a wedding at the church.  It was the happiest wedding I’ve ever seen.  All of the families, including Marie’s were delighted.  The whole congregation was excited.  These were two people everybody loved.  Everyone was excited about them being together, able to bless one another, to be companions of one another together.

And as I put together this message, I came to understand why.  Bob and Adelene had spent their entire lives becoming the person they want, wants.  Amen.